By the end of 2009 the total useable operational capacity of the prison estate was 85,986.
The Ministry of Justice aims to increase prison capacity to 96,000 places by 2014 through the prison capacity programme. These places are being provided through the building of new prisons as well as expansion of existing ones and more effective use of the estate. Over 3,600 new places will be delivered in 2010 and around 1,400 new places in 2011.
Capacity estimates are subject to change due to the number of existing prison places which may need to be taken out of use in the future for maintenance purposes. The precise numbers and delivery timings of new prison places will also depend on construction schedules and prioritisation within the prison estate.
The Ministry of Justice produces annual projections of the prison population, most recently in August 2009. These project the prison population under three different scenarios, based on different assumptions about future sentencing trends: the medium scenario assumes no increases or decreases in custody rates or determinate sentence lengths. The high/low scenarios reflect a 1 per cent. annual increase/decrease in custody rates and a 0.5 per cent. increase/decrease in the average (determinate) custodial sentence lengths.
Other impacts included in the projections, such as those of legislation and processes, are applied equally to all scenarios. These cover the anticipated effect of policy and process initiatives that have agreed implementation timetables. These assumptions and anticipated effects have remained unchanged since last year projections.
The requested information is shown in the following table:
High Medium Low February 2010 83,600 83,100 82,500 March 2010 84,800 84,200 83,500 April 2010 85,000 84,400 83,600 May 2010 85,000 84,300 83,400 June 2010 85,700 84,900 83,900 July 2010 86,600 85,700 84,700 August 2010 86,400 85,500 84,400 September 2010 86,700 85,700 84,400 October 2010 86,800 85,700 84,400 November 2010 87,300 86,100 84,800 December 2010 85,600 84,400 82,900 January 2011 86,500 85,200 83,600 February 2011 86,800 85,400 83,700 Notes: 1. All numbers rounded to the nearest hundred and are end of month figures. 2. The prison population is influenced by diverse factors that can mean that the actual future prison population may not be the same as that projected: changes in sentencer behaviour, policy decisions and the criminal justice process, which can respond to a multitude of environmental factors such as high profile criminal cases and public debate; implementation of new policies and processes without a timetable, or for which a quantitative assessment of the impact is currently not possible; unknown future policy, process and political changes.
More details on the projections may be found in the latest published bulletin, “Prison Population Projections 2009-2015” Ministry of Justice Statistics Bulletin, 28 August 2009. This is available at the following webpage:
http://www.justice.gov.uk/publications/prisonpopulation.htm